Month: May 2004

I just finished reading Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine’s Last Chance to See. Wow. It was great! I’ve been a fan of Douglas Adams since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (mostly for his Hitcher’s Guide to the Galaxy) but I’d never read any non-fiction by him before. It was wonderful to see his irreverent and humorous style remained unchanged. Unfortunately, the copy of the book I got from Fritz was in an electronic format and didn’t include the photographs which I understand exist in the dead-tree version. Still, it was a delightful read and any Douglas Adams fan should enjoy it. Overall, I give it 4.75 out of 5 points.

Next up, I’ll me reading through Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic by Terry Jones. Mr. Jones apparently read Douglas Adams’s Hitcher’s Guide to the Galaxy series, saw the couple of paragraphs that talk about the Starship Titanic and thought to himself “That would make a fun book! I shall sit down and write it, right after I take off all my clothes!”

Oh and in case that wasn’t a sufficient hint for you; this is the same Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. Keen! 🙂

I finished reading I, Robot and while I enjoyed some of the stories; as a whole the book just didn’t work for me as well as some of Asimov’s other has. He tried hanging the stories together as though it was Dr. Calvin telling them to a journalist but the stories weren’t actually told from her point of view. Ah well, it was an okay read; so overall I give it 2 out of 5 points. Then I borrowed a copy of Forever Free from “my friend Fritz” and read through that. It’s a sequel to Forever Peace (which is itself a sequel to Forever War) and it was interesting to see where Haldeman went with the characters, but I wish I’d read Forever Peace first and that “Fritz’s” copy of Forever Free was in better shape. I’ll have to check the local library and see if they have both books so I can try again. Overall, Forever Free was worth 2.75 out of 5 points; it was an interesting read but I couldn’t really get into the characters’ heads and nothing in it really clicked with me.

Currently, I’ve just started reading Last Chance to See by Mark Carwardine and Douglas Adams and I’ll let you know how I liked it later, but now it’s lunch time and I’m outta here! 😀

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Work is such fun today!
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Our corporate network got hit with the WORM_SASSER.B virus and since I work out of a remote office that relies on servers in the main office; I’m effectively dead in the water today. I wish we had some more Linux boxes on the network, so that maybe we wouldn’t get hit so hard by viri like this. Unfortunately, all our company’s software is Windows based which doesn’t give us much room to do that.

Ah well, at least I’m having plenty of time to read Assimov’s I, Robot (I borrowed a copy from “my friend Fritz”) and so far, so good. It’s nice to go back and reread the works of some of the masters of Sci-Fi once in a while. Oh, I should mention that I finished Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast over the weekend and enjoyed it but while he explored an interesting concept, it wasn’t one of his better books. Overall, I’d give it 2.5 out of 5 points.

This evening I went out to help Pukka celebrate his last night as a single man. We went over to the Cantebury Inn’s restuarant/bar and had big, big goblets of alcoholic beverages. It was no wild party with strippers and hookers. But we had fun anyway; at least, I think we had fun. The night is kind of blurry in my memory. 🙂

I also finished reading Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, which I’m happy to say that I enjoyed very much. Basically the story deals with a war with an alien race viewed from the perspective of one of our soldiers and how space travel (with the accompanying relativistic effects) affected his life. The story is a bit dated now (some of the events take place starting in the 1990s) but it’s still a good read and overall, I give it 4.5 out of 5 points.

Next up, I’ll be reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Number of the Beast. This book is about double the previous 2 I’ve read combined so it might be a bit longer before I make any further comments on it. On the other hand, when I read Heinlein’s work; I usually get so absorbed into it that I forget about time/sleep/food, so it might take less time than I think.

On a different note, I updated my copy of the Amazon Media Manager hack for WordPress. As such, you can now see what video games; I’m currently playing (UT2004 – rockin’!, Wild Arms 2 – ‘sokay). I’ve also added another DVD set to the movies I’m watching.

Ultraviolet is the modern, vampire thriller mini-series that was made over in Britian. I’ve had it for a while but just restarted watching it the other night and it’s fantastic, though that bit in the 2nd episode where the biker girl is walking around gives me the willies! If you like British movies/tv or are just a fan of well made vampire stories; I highly recommend you check this out!